


At the Whim of the Reaper

by Theis54321



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Magic, Murder Mystery, Originally from a forum game, Short One Shot, Urban Fantasy, but not really lmao, short read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26271394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theis54321/pseuds/Theis54321
Summary: A mere schoolbag leads a curious mage to his untimely demise.-----A fun little short that I wrote as part of a forum writing game. Just something fun, nothing too profound. The character deaths aren't very graphic, but just keep in mind that they're there.





	At the Whim of the Reaper

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering what the forum game was, it was pretty simple. A death god has placed a curse on the world, beginning with a single person dying. Once they have died (usually in a violent, spectacular fashion!), an object related to the person, or their death will be infused with the curse. For example, someone who writes a scene of someone dying after tripping over a tree root might include their glasses being flung from their face. The next person will have to write something involving another character who, in one way or another, touches those glasses and thus, becomes marked with the curse and is the next to die.

Down a lonely street lies a single house. Rundown, decrepit, and in rather terrible shape. The locals claimed it to be haunted, and nobody dared to pry any deeper. It was as if the house's very existence was an aberration. The house, with its broken windows and stained walls, always seemed out of place.

Within the seemingly abandoned building, there was no sign of life. Except for inside one room. Within that room, a schoolbag lays suspended in the air, held in place by dozens of tiny, glowing threads, each glittering with an ethereal aura. Slowly, but surely, the bag slowly lowers itself, until it hovers just above a man's outstretched hand.

Scrunching his eyes, the man stares intently at the schoolbag, studying it closely. On the surface, it seems normal, albeit with a broken zipper and a small stain on one of the straps. But the man knew better. He felt it in his gut, he could smell something...off. The previous owner of the bag suddenly dying made local headlines, and with the turn of recent events, the man had his suspicions.

One of the man's...associates had mysteriously disappeared, you see. This would not have been a problem, had the man had not discovered his associate's home to be completely empty, save for an empty ritual circle in his backyard, and a few scraps of purple cloth...

This, combined with the schoolgirl's death, prompted the man to perform further investigations. Searching online was the first step. He found nothing of note, just rumors and scattered hearsay. His next actions took a more...mythical route. He consulted with his fellow mages and other occult sources. Close comrades, mystical sages, even ancient tomes and codexes.

Unfortunately, he found very few answers. The prophets were as vague as ever, and attempts at finding any patterns all but failed. Whispers of some sort of affliction or curse, obscure scriptures hailing some ancient deity.

All of this, while morbidly interesting and rather ominous, failed to help the man figure out how to fix the situation. So, he took matters into his own hands. Acquiring the schoolbag was easy enough, with the help of an invisibility spell. Its late owner wouldn't need it, anyway. Further study of the bag would be needed...

If the supposed "curse" was truly responsible for his associate and that little girl's death, then he would need precautions. The man cast protective spells around him that would shield from any physical threats, and he avoided contact with the bag using a spell of his very own fashion; multicolored threads of pure energy, manipulated remotely to carry the bag without directly touching it.

Not stopping there, the man took the bag to one of his safe houses, the very same house that he laid in now. The house, while taking the appearance of a broken-down shack, was, in reality, a focal point of pure magical energy. It was built on top of the intersection of two ley lines, and as a result, was a source of great mana. A multitude of enchantments and spells were laid in place, lining the walls of the house and encompassing the ground itself.

The man's line of thinking went something like this: "Surely, with all of these precautions, I'm protected from anything that could happen?"

Under other circumstances, perhaps he would be right. But as he turned the schoolbag over with his threads, each glowing string twisting and pulling at the bag, he felt the ground itself begin to shake.

A massive tremor rips through the house, sending the man tumbling into the ground. Bewildered, he tries to get up, only to fall once more from another quake. With a crack, the man feels the magical protection around the house start to get compromised, the enchantments falling away like wet paper, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of mana flooding in from the earth below.

The man screams in terror as a sea of blue fire erupts at his feet, consuming him in a raging inferno. The last thing he sees before he dies is the schoolbag, still raised in the air from the strings of light wrapping it, hanging above him like a cruel flag of victory.

He has no time to think as his body fades into ash.

\-----

A quiet town was awoken in the middle of the night by a massive explosion, Upon looking for the source, all that was found was a massive, smoldering crater where an old abandoned house used to sit. Some eyewitnesses claimed that the flames were blue in color, and that the air "whispered" to them. Pictures of the scene have been circulated online, confirming the blue flames, though no evidence of the air-whispers has surfaced.

Many think the event to be a hoax, but no definite answers have been found. Of the many rumors regarding this situation, the most notable ones are the disappearance of two men, both regarded as the local "magicians", a string of unusual deaths, and an individual claiming to have seen a glowing blue thread in the rubble...


End file.
